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Dane Vogel is Ultor's Head of Special Projects; later receiving a promotion to Chairman of the Board. Additionally, he is the final antagonist of Saints Row 2. Vogel is a handsome, middle-aged man of athletic build with spiked, dirty blonde hair. Wherever he goes, he always wears a gray, striped business suit complete with an orange tie and an Ultor pin attached to the collar of his blazer.

On the outside, Vogel is a popular icon; ladies find him attractive[reference?] and men applaud him for bringing order and reform to some of the most crime-ridden parts of the city.[reference?] His actions gained him a great deal of respect and admiration among his peers during the period when The Protagonist lay in a coma at the Stilwater Penitentiary. Vogel knows at least some Japanese, being able to understand Kazuo Akuji, to Akuji's surprise, as he expresses his anger in the language.[5]

On the inside, Vogel is a twisted, power-hungry man who only wishes to satisfy his own selfish desires at the expense of others.[reference?] In contrast to what he says, his goals are not truly aimed for the benefit of Stilwater, but for the glory of Ultor, and to ensure the company's financial success. Vogel has little care or concern for whatever he has to do to make things go his way, and is often cunning, devious, and ruthless in the execution of his schemes. On the other hand, he is also a coward, often depending on the protection of Ultor's private security force, the Masako, to safeguard both him and his interests, and deal with any potential threats or nuisances.

In the years following the events of Saints Row and the death of Alderman Richard Hughes, the Ultor Corporation established a branch in Stilwater with Dane Vogel as its Head of Special Projects. From there, Ultor began spreading their influence throughout the city beginning with the redevelopment of Saint's Row, and the construction of the iconic Phillips Building in Mission Beach; the latter of which would become their headquarters. Over the next several years, Saint's Row underwent a series of incredible transformations which ultimately turned it into a modern, glass and steel utopia for wealthy and privileged people, while most of the Row's original inhabitants were forced out. Vogel himself personally oversaw many of these transformations, including the complete restoration of the Saints Row Church which once housed the 3rd Street Saints. He also paid a visit to Saints lieutenant Dex and personally recruited him into Ultor's Security Division.[6]

Within this same period, three new gangs worked their way into Stilwater following the disbandment of the Saints: The Brotherhood, The Ronin, and the Sons of Samedi. Although Vogel wasn't too happy about having these new gangs running amok, in the time frame preceding the return of The Protagonist, he secretly made a deal with Shogo Akuji, leader of The Ronin for protection of some of Ultor's investments, such as a financial share in the Poseidon's Palace.[7] This deal is ultimately broken at when Shogo's father, and The Ronin's true leader, Kazuo Akuji, demands a more substantial tribute from Vogel for continued protection. Vogel refuses to comply with the demand, so in response, Kazuo severs all ties between Ultor and The Ronin, much to Shogo's disbelief.[5]

Once the Saints are resurrected, Vogel is soon forced into an alliance with Maero, leader of the Brotherhood, who unexpectedly storms into Vogel's office and bullies him into using Ultor's connections to help the Brotherhood destroy the Saints.[8] Vogel later ends this alliance when he informs Maero that he has moved into a higher position of power, and sees nothing to gain from doing the Brotherhood any more favors. He then has Maero escorted off the premises of the Phillips Building by the Masako.[9]

Dane Vogel outside the Saints Row Church just before the attempt on his life by the 3rd Street Saints.

As the gang violence increases, Vogel begins to see it as a potential opportunity for Ultor, and thus devises a simple, but twisted plan: allow the gangs of Stilwater to run loose upon the city (specifically Shivington) and cripple each other with their consistent fighting for territory and power. The gang violence would drastically reduce property values throughout the area, giving Ultor the ability to buy up large plots of land for next to nothing. Once they owned the land, Ultor could develop and transform it into prime real-estate for more high-class people, thus yielding greater profits for the company.[4]

Vogel's plan also includes a solution to the gang violence itself. Once the gangs had been torn apart almost to the point of utter helplessness, Ultor would step in and "donate" obscene amounts of money to the Stilwater Police Department to increase police presence in the city. The Stilwater PD would then crackdown on the already weakened gangs and eliminate them.[10]
Once confident in its success, Vogel unveils his plan to the rest of his colleagues at Ultor during a corporate party, and gains almost unanimous approval to proceed.

When the 3rd Street Saints become the only standing gang in Stilwater, Ultor dispatches both the Stilwater PD and the Masako to eliminate its leadership. The move fails after Johnny Gat, Pierce, Shaundi, and The Protagonist all manage to escape.[11] Despite this setback, Vogel still has a lot of confidence in his plan, now codenamed "force majeure"[12]; even when the conflict between Ultor and the Saints starts heating up, and the Board of Directors complain to him about the unchecked gang violence. Rather than trying to negotiate with them, or listen to reason, he retorts by stating, "there is no problem".[12]

In retaliation for the previous events,[11] the Saints kill several Ultor executives at the Rounds Square Shopping Center,[13] and sabotage Ultor's secret R&D facility, The Pyramid.[14] This angers the Board of Directors, who finally turn on Vogel, stating that they've "had enough of his ego." Vogel brushes off this comment by claiming that his ego is what got them all where they are in the first place. The board remains unconvinced, and they order Vogel to finish off the Saints by any means necessary or risk losing his job, which they assured would be "the least of his worries."[12]

Angry but not swayed, Vogel decides that the board has become a problem, and that he would be much better off having them out of the way so as to become chairman. To accomplish this feat, he secretly manipulates The Protagonist into massacring every member of the board during an annual corporate party aboard one of their private yachts.[15] After receiving his promotion to chairman from the corporate office, Vogel celebrates by calling a press conference to outline his ambitions for "The Revitalization of Shivington".

During this conference, The Protagonist makes a move to assassinate Vogel while Gat covers them with a sniper rifle on a nearby rooftop. An Ultor security guard sees Gat going up to the roof, and ends up foiling the assassination by assaulting Johnny before he can get his first shot off. In the ensuing fight, Gat accidentally discharges the sniper rifle before knocking the guard to the streets below. By then it is too late, as everyone in the crowd begins scrambling for cover. Having no choice but to improvise, The Protagonist takes this small window of opportunity to try and shoot Vogel before he can escape. Their efforts are in vain as all of the Ultor security guards present at the conference open fire and give up their lives distracting the Saints' leader long enough for Vogel to get away in his Ultor-branded The Job.[16]

An unscathed and cowardly Vogel manages to escape back to the safety of the Phillips Building before placing it under lockdown.[16] It proves to be nowhere near secure enough as The Protagonist hijacks an attack helicopter and uses it to disable the building's security systems before gaining entry into Vogel's office. In anger and desperation, Vogel draws an NR4 pistol and attacks The Protagonist with a team of Masako units, but they are defeated.[16]

Backed into a corner with no place left to run, Vogel tries pleading with The Protagonist, claiming to be the Saint's "number one fan," only to be shot in the mouth in mid-speech, sending him crashing through one of his top story office windows. Vogel falls several stories down the entire height of the Phillips Building, gruesomely smashing off of other structures in the vicinity before landing close to the building's main entrance and getting crushed against the pavement. Vogel's death decisively ends his reign as the head of Ultor, leaving the Saints to dominate Stilwater once again.[17]

In the aftermath, Eric Gryphon is appointed as Vogel's successor, and he befriends the Saints following the events of Corporate Warfare.[18] This opens up as to how the Saints become major celebrities in Saints Row: The Third. At this point, they've entered into a partnership with Ultor known as the Saints/Ultor Media Group.

After The Protagonist is kidnapped by Satan, Johnny Gat and Kinzie Kensington go to hell after them, and locate Dane.[1] Gat accuses Dane of kidnapping The Protagonist, Dane proves his innocence by showing Gat his invitation to the wedding of Satan's daughter, Jezebel, and The Protagonist. He tells Johnny that the invitations are tied to the soul, so he cannot give Gat his own invitation. Instead, he proposes that the two Saints cause some mayhem around New Hades to draw the Devil out. Whichever party kills the other, Dane benefits either way. He has identified five Arch-Dukes tasked with running Hell day-to-day, as well as opportunists such as Blackbeard, Shakespeare, Vlad, Kiki and Viola DeWynter to gain as allies. In a storybook cutscene, Dane gives Lucifer's cracked halo to Gat which grants him wings.

Throughout the game, Dane takes on the role of a guide, giving hints, Quests and Challenges.

Dane uses Tacos Malos as a front, through which the Last Supper weapon is unlocked.

When the Satan's Wrath meter is two thirds full, Dane is captured by demons under orders from Satan and they try to drain his soul. Gat and Kinzie eventually rescue him.

Centuries later, in the Shawarma cutscene which unlocks after completing City Takeover, Kiki is kidnapped by William Sharp and Dane risks his own life to save her. He succeeds and the two of them decide to get married with "iron clad prenups", and force Sharp to be their pool boy.[19]

Vogel sometimes calls the radio station The Mix 107.77 asking for the song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears, calling it his theme song although the song was written to mock people like him. The station DJ, Darius Masters, occasionally says it is a "tribute to Ultor".[quote?] This line is not disabled at the end of the game, so Vogel still calls after his death.

Vogel also calls Ultor FM asking for a good song for a commercial, which then plays "Face Down" by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.

Vogel is the Dutch and German word for "bird", his successor Eric Gryphon's surname follows a similar pattern.

If a Satchel Charge is thrown at Dane Vogel during "... and a Better Life", he gains the behaviour of any other person who has a Satchel Charge stuck to their body; running around aimlessly and flailing their arms around in a futile attempt to escape the Satchel Charges.

When The Protagonist shoots Vogel after trying to convince him to spare him, he aims his gun directly at Vogel's mouth and shoots. But when the camera angle changes, The Protagonist is feet away from Vogel when he falls out of the window.

In Kinzie's Warehouse in Saints Row: The Third and IV, there's a newspaper clipping on the wall with the headline, "Who is Dane Vogel?"[23]

When Vogel first approaches the Saints in their hideout in the mission "Room Service," he makes a comment about him getting his tetanus shot. He still says this after the Saints Hideout has been fully upgraded as the Purgatory nightclub after completing 22 missions.

In Saints Row IV, Vogel is referenced in the game data files as a homie, and includes a full model and a Homie head, but has no audio lines.

On 2013-12-18, Jay Mohr posted on twitter that he was "About to do my voice over work for new Saints Row video game."[24]

In his audio tomes, Dane acknowledges that he had been a fool to go after the 3rd Street Saints. Not only did it cost him his life, it also cost him his prestigious career as Ultor's Director of Special Projects. He vows to never make a mistake like that again.[25][26]

After City Takeover has been completed in the Forge District, a cutscene plays where Jane Austen reveals that Dane had not been completely honest with the Saints in his motives for wanting to bring down Satan. When first arriving in Hell, Dane tried to strike a partnership with the devil, but Satan rejected him on the basis that he considered all who entered his realm to be inferior and little more than pawns for him to do with as he pleased. Dane was insulted by this and became determined to find a way to undermine Satan in order to get revenge.

It's like my father said, if you're gonna build an ivory tower, you're gonna have to kill a few elephants.

— Dane Vogel, pretty much summing up his modus operandi on The Anna Show

This is Shivington. Once a pristine set of tenement homes, this neighborhood has devolved into a dangerous ghetto, filled with undesirables such as these. Now, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering...ugly buildings, unwashed masses, what the hell is Ultor thinking? My friends, we're thinking about the future. Picture this... glass towers, clean streets, and no one below the poverty line trying to wash your car. Impossible? For a lesser company, maybe. Now I'm not here to make idle promises or vague predictions, no offense to you politicians out there...

No, I'm here to show you how we're going to do it. Now, obviously before we can remodel Shivington we need to own the land, so how do we do that? By directing the gangs towards Sunnyvale, not only are we lowering the number of our detractors, we're lowering the property value as well, which means when we buy the land, the savings get passed onto you, the stock holders. The gangs cripple each other, we direct funds to the Stilwater Police Department, they increase police presence...and pretty soon all those nasty little gang bangers are gone. Crime stops, property value goes up, and now your population looks like this.

Shogo Akuji: "Dane, don't worry I'll get the money back..."Vogel: "You're missing the point Shogo, the money was insured, I'm more concerned about you."Shogo: "What?"Vogel: "Ultor and the Ronin have had a very healthy relationship in the past, but lately...well, when I pay protection money I expect some fucking protection."Shogo: "Watch yourself Vogel."

Vogel: "Mr. Akuji, your son and I negotiated a very reasonable contract...."Kazuo Akuji: "My son's an idiot Mr. Vogel...if you wish for the Ronin's protection you had best be prepared to offer us something much more substantial."Vogel: "That's not going to happen."Kazuo: "Then our business is concluded."

— During the meeting with Kazuo Akuji during the "Changing the Deal" cutscene of Visiting Hours

Vogel: "Or send him in... Wow... Thanks Jaime."Vogel: "You must be Mr. Maero..."Maero: "I've heard about the connections Ultor has...you're gonna get my boys outta jail and help me destroy the Saints."Vogel: "Your[sic] bargaining posture needs some work."Maero: "The Saints killed my girlfriend and crippled my best friend."Vogel: "And that's unfortunate, but Ultor is a business and there's no profit in revenge. Don't worry about the door though, that one's on me."Maero: "Fine. You want money? In a few days a shipment's coming in-"Vogel: "Mr. Maero, nebulous shipment or not, I think I made myself quite cl-"

Maero flips Vogel's desk.

Vogel: "Woah!"

Maero grabs Vogel by the throat.

Maero: "Let's try this again..."

Maero dangles Vogel out the window.

Maero: "You're gonna help me destroy the Saints."Vogel: "And Ultor would love to be of service."Maero: "Good."

Jaime: "See...you..."Vogel: "Thanks for the heads up Jaime."Vogel: "Is there something I can help you with?"Maero: "They hit my boys when they were on the prison bus."Vogel: "Between your girlfriend and your gang, I'd say you're a magnet for tragedy Maero."Maero: "You think this is fuckin' funny?"Vogel: "No, but I do think it's your problem."Maero: "My problems are your problems...or do you need some fresh air to remind you."Vogel: "No, see my problem is that a sideshow freak is messing up my paper work...your problem is that there's a group of security guards with assault rifles pointed at your back."Maero: "Your security guards look more like a private army."Vogel: "Call 'em whatever you want, the point is that they have big guns. I'm sorry you couldn't protect your friends, I really am...but Ultor is done doing you favors...come back here again and I'll have you shot on sight."Maero: "Go fuck yourself Vogel."Vogel: "I've enjoyed our time together too ...but I think it's time to move on. Gentlemen, could you please show our guest out?"Vogel: "Oh, and Maero...don't worry your little shipment. Ultor has already appropriated it."Maero: "What did you say?"Vogel: "Ultor security has taken control of the boat carrying your goods...it only seemed fair that we get compensated for letting your boys out of jail. You can go now."Maero: "That boat is never gonna make it to shore."Vogel: "Goodbye Maero."

Jaime: "Mr. Vogel, will you be needing a car to take you to the party?"Jaime: "Sir?"Dane Vogel: "That's alright Jaime, I think I'm going to skip it this year. Oh and Jaime?"Jaime: "Yes, sir?"Dane Vogel: "Please move my things to my new office...and set up a press conference."Jaime: "You were promoted Mr. Vogel?"Dane Vogel: "I'm about to be..."

Everyone's chasing the Stygian dream down here... a way to make hell just a little more tolerable... and when you're surrounded with that amount of desperation, believe me, it's easy to find people who'll lay it all on line for next to nothing. Some folks think I had all this handed to me and I take advantage of people, but here's the god's honest truth: in life and in death I worked for everything that I had. Opportunities mean fuck all if you do nothing with them. Most of these poor bastards down here whine about their lot in life, but are unwilling to do anything about it. That's not me.

— Dane Tome 1

"Know your limits". It was the best piece of advice my father gave me and I ignored it because I was a fucking idiot. I was the director of special projects for Ultor and I pissed it all away because my ambition got the better of me. The reality is that I'm a kingmaker, not a king. I'm not going to make that same mistake twice.

— Dane Tome 2

I'd be a liar if I didn't say I got a little pissed when the would-be president shot in me in the face. But after a couple years of reflection I realized something: they had the same look in their eyes that I have. They were driven. And when I realized that, I knew I wanted to prepare for the moment they would come down to Hell, because on that day I wanted to be standing with the Saints.

— Dane Tome 3

I knew that when the leader of the Saints came down here he wasn't going to be interested in hearing what I had to say unless I had a pretty fucking big peace offering. The perfect opportunity came after Blackbeard robbed Satan's Palace and stole Lucifer's Halo. Blackbeard knew that he had to unload it fast before Sinterpol raided the barren's and so he was willing to put a price on an otherwise priceless artifact. It cost me a fortune but it was worth it. Satan would never suspect that I had it, and I could bide my time until the leader of the saints was hell bound. My plan was solid, but not even I could predict a shotgun wedding.

— Dane Tome 4

Satan forcing Jezebel to marry The President definitely put a wrinkle in things. For one I wasn't sure if Johnny was going to let me explain the situation before he killed me... For another I was entrusting the most powerful artifact in the world to someone who had worse impulse control than teens on prom night.

Jane, we've donated millions of dollars to the Stilwater PD as well as rebuilt the shattered community of Saint's Row. I understand that everyone likes to pick on the big corporations, but this latest groundless attack on Ultor's integrity is just ridiculous.

— Dane Vogel in an interview with Jane Valderamma in the Early Parole cutscene

"Know your limits". It was the best piece of advice my father gave me and I ignored it because I was a fucking idiot. I was the director of special projects for Ultor and I pissed it all away because my ambition got the better of me. The reality is that I'm a kingmaker, not a king. I'm not going to make that same mistake twice.

I'd be a liar if I didn't say I got a little pissed when the would-be president shot in me in the face. But after a couple years of reflection I realized something: they had the same look in their eyes that I have. They were driven. And when I realized that, I knew I wanted to prepare for the moment they would come down to Hell, because on that day I wanted to be standing with the Saints.